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<br />because the basketballs and baseballs are the same shape - <br />namely spheres. Size has nothing to do with the amount of <br />water in the room - basketballs are. larger and will have <br />larger 'voids' between them, baseballs are smaller and while <br />the voids will be smaller as well, there are a whole lot more <br />void spaces with the baseballs than with the basketballs. Now <br />think about filling the same room with both basketballs and <br />baseballs and filling it with water. Will there be more water <br />or less water than before? Answer - less because now the <br />controlling factor is the sorting. Not all the particles <br />(balls) are the same size although they are still the same <br />shape (spheres), and the baseballs will take up some of the <br />void spaces (empty volume) between the basketballs: You can <br />further reduce the porosity by adding marbles to the room - <br />now the marbles will fill in some of the empty spaces between <br />the basketballs and baseballs. Sorting is a measure of the <br />range of sizes of particles in a material - well sorted means <br />that the material is made up of particles of only a couple of <br />different sizes, poorly sorted means that the particles have <br />a whole lot of different sizes. <br />Now think of filing the same room with books and filling it <br />with water. Will there be more or less water in the room than <br />there was with the baseballs? Answer - a trick question. It <br />depends on how the books are put into the room. Are they just <br />dumped into the room so that some books are laying flat, some <br />are standing on their ends, and others are leaning over onto <br />other books, or are they stacked very neatly and tightly? The <br />books will soak up a lot of water - and we would have a hard <br />time getting that water back out of the room. But there will <br />also be water between the books - which we could get back out <br />by opening a door and letting the water drain out. Obviously, <br />the books that are stacked neatly will have a lot less water <br />between them than the books that are just dumped into the <br />room. There could be almost as much water in the room with <br />the books as there was with the baseballs - but usually there <br />is a lot less water (at least water that we can easily drain <br />back out of the room) . <br /> <br />permeability is another concept that is important in ground <br />water. It is a measure of how easily a fluid will flow <br />through the materials. Think again about a 32 oz cup filled <br />with ice and soda. If you and your buddy have a chugging <br />contest, and you have a soda from McDonald's with cubed ice in <br />it, and your buddy has a soda from Taco Bell with crushed ice <br />in it, which one of you will win the chugging contest? Answer <br />- you will because the cup with cubed ice will drain faster <br />than the cup with crushed ice. Why? Because the cubed ice <br />has bigger openings (voids) between the cubes and the amount <br />of connections and the size of the connections between <br />adjacent voids is larger than with the crushed ice. Think <br />again about our rooms filled with basketballs, baseballs, and <br />books. Imagine the sprinkler system in the ceiling being <br />turned on in all three rooms at the same time. In which room <br />will the water reach the floor the fastest? Answer - in the <br />